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Article by Dr. Michael Zekulin, Calgary Herald

http://www.calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/
Zekulin+Harper+right+terrorism+Trudeau/8311465/story.html

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An audio interview with Dr. Michael Zekulin with CBC Radio, The Sunday Edition with Michael Enright

http://www.cbc.ca/player/AudioMobile/
Sunday+Edition/ID/2380861001/

Congratulations to Dr. Susan Franceschet who has been awarded one of five Established Researcher Awards in the Faculty of Arts.  This award recognizes Dr. Franceschet's research successes over the past two years.   

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The Department of Political Science would like to extend its Congratulations to Dr. Barry Cooper and Dr. Susan Franceschet on successfully receiving SSHRCC funding for their research projects described below.

Barry Cooper, “Very Early Political Symbols”.  Western political scientists have neglected very early political symbols and pay little attention to the evidence of political life prior to the Greeks. This project examines what we conventionally call prehistoric political and religious symbolism. In more scholarly language, I propose to discuss the mobilary (or portable and mostly personal) and parietal (or mural and mostly cave) art of the European Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic as expressions of the artists’ experience of cosmological order.

Susan Franceschet, “Gender, Representation, and Power in Executive Office:  Parity Cabinets in Chile and Spain”.  Political leaders in an expanding number of countries have formed cabinets in which women and men are equally represented. Yet cabinets are perceived to be losing power to chief executives and informal networks in the executive branch. Are women entering institutions that are no longer the centre of policymaking? The research project answers this question through a structured comparative study of parity and non-parity cabinets in Chile (2000—the present) and Spain (1996—present). The goal is to determine whether parity led to changes in the role of cabinet in the policy process and the relationship of cabinet to the bureaucracy and executive advisory networks. The research has both scholarly and practical significance: It opens up the “black box” of the executive branch while also revealing its gendered dimensions. In principle, cabinets are at the core of the policy-making process, making women’s presence as ministers key to policy changes that benefit women as a group. To achieve policy change, however, female ministers must have influence, and cabinet as a whole must remain a central actor in the policy process.